Category Archives: COURTNEY BRANDT

I’ll follow up this post with my ongoing adventures in Kindle Select, however, the recent free listing of my book Keeping in Line (under my YA and real name, Courtney Brandt) did generate two memorable reviews:

“To whoever wrote the book Keeping in Line: I want to personally say fuck you. You ruined my sleep cycle that I worked hard to reset. And I mean this in the most polite way. The book was clean. 😉 “

I’ve briefly alluded to this over the past few months, but haven’t written anything about it because I was waiting to see what the outcome would be. As much as I try and keep my two writing halves separate, Courtney Brandt seems to want to have something to do with this blog, so I’m not going to fight her (me).

Hello, July. Wow – where does the year go? I’ve always liked to mark things and this mid-point in the year seemed like a good time to check in. There’s a few things to catch up – WIPs, building a brand, blog, Twitter, so let’s get started!

Let’s say the average of my former two free dates via KDP Select was around 1,000 units. For yesterday’s unannounced and completely non-publicized day, a grand total of 76 units were downloaded. I guess this is unequivocal and irrefutable proof that publicity DOES pay off and in a big way. The unfortunate side to this is that publicity comes very easy to the YA books. I have over 2700 followers on a marching dedicated Tumblr, as well as 230 on my facebook account and it’s what people ‘know’ me as. Building a platform for my upcoming works is going to be a much more difficult path.

So, part of this blog is to help prep for an inevitable audience and totally successful bow into self publication. This week’s lesson involved the first attempt I’ve made ‘giving away’ a book on Amazon (by enrolling in the KDP Select Program. For those who don’t know, this basically means you will sell a book ONLY through Amazon for 3 months. Given most of my sales come through Amazon, I did not feel I was giving up significant sales elsewhere).

For reasons I’ll later get into, I’ve decided to break away from my YA name, Courtney Brandt, and build a new platform for myself under a pen name, Ann Benjamin. As Courtney Brandt, I have 5 self published titles (all centering around a high school marching band). The first book in the series, The Line, has been out for quite some time and was the perfect title to give away.

So, let me start of by saying, I’m not going to be a mother. I don’t want to be. I respect those that have maternal instincts, but I really have no desire to have a child. Whatsoever.

“You’ll change your mind. You’re still young.” I get those two a lot, but after being married to my husband for almost 9 years (and together for over 10), I think if I wanted to procreate I would’ve done so by now.

I realize this behavior puts me outside of what society considers normal. So, I put some thought into why I felt this way – why don’t I want to have children? Why does anyone have a kid? Why does anyone feel their DNA is so important they need to recreate part of themselves to leave for the next generation? There’s a biological drive to, sure, but I’m okay with enjoying practicing this side of things. I like lists (and have the notebooks to prove it), so, after some thought, here’s why I believe being an author has greatly reduced my desire to have kids: